Oscar-Winning Actor Maximilian Schell Dies at 83

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Feb 1, 2014 at 12:01 AMFeb 1, 2014 at 11:13 AM

Maximilian Schell, the Austrian actor who won an Oscar for playing a defense attorney inJudgment at Nuremberg, died overnight at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria following a sudden and serious illness,The Associated Pressreports. He was 83.Schell was born in Vienna ...

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Maximilian Schell, the Austrian actor who won an Oscar for playing a defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg, died overnight at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria following a sudden and serious illness, The Associated Press reports. He was 83.

Schell was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland after his family left the country during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He acted on stage and screen in Europe before moving to Hollywood in 1958. (Schell's older sister Maria, who died in 2005, was also an international film star.)

His first Hollywood film was the World War II drama The Young Lions, which also starred Marlon Brando, Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift.

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Judgment at Nuremberg was just his second Hollywood film. Schell played attorney Hans Rolfe, who defended four Nazis on trial, and won the Best Actor Academy Award in 1961. It was his second time playing Rolfe, whom he also portrayed in an episode of the TV show Playhouse 90.

Schell later transitioned into producing and directing. He received Best Foreign Film Oscar nominations for his films First Love in 1970 and The Pedestrian in 1973. He also directed the 1984 Marlene Dietrich documentary Marlene, which was nominated for Best Documentary.

Schell also received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Julia (1977).

In the 1990s, Schell had roles in films including Telling Lies in America and Deep Impact. He portrayed Vladimir Lenin in the 1992 HBO miniseries Stalin and received a Golden Globe nomination for the role.